Heretofore, as a typical heat exchanger of this type, there has been a fixed type heat pipe heat exchanger in which a plurality of heat pipes is arranged and fixed as a group and the central portion thereof is partitioned to form two flow paths on opposite sides so that a high temperature fluid flows along one of the flow paths and a low temperature fluid flows along the other flow path, so as to intersect the heat pipe group and by utilizing the characteristic of the heat pipes, the heat obtained from the high temperature fluid is transferred to the low temperature fluid through a fluid enveloped in the heat pipes. This fixed type heat exchanger is simple in construction and easy to manufacture, where as it suffers from a disadvantage that when it is used with a highly corrosive or highly clogging fluid, certain particular pipes, for example, the pipes at the low temperature portion, are corroded and clogged earlier than the pipes at the other region and the maintenance such as interchange or cleaning of such pipes is difficult.
It is an object of the present invention to eliminate such a disadvantage peculiar to the prior art and to provide a heat pipe heat exchanger in which corrosion or clogging of heat pipes is not localized at a particular region.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a heat pipe heat exchanger the maintenance of which is easy.